Effective Tuesday April 3, 2012 at 200 pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) or 1800 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch (TAFB) of the National Hurricane Center will reconfigure its marine zones for the offshore waters in the Caribbean and Southwest North Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico.

Currently there are five (5) marine zones covering the Caribbean and Southwest North Atlantic and four (4) marine zones covering the Gulf of Mexico. These zones will be reconfigured into twenty-four (24) marine zones to cover the Caribbean and Southwest North Atlantic and eight (8) zones to cover the Gulf of Mexico. Marine observations, local effects, and substantial customer feedback all indicate that the current configuration of marine zones does not adequately address the local effects and does not provide enough detail for the marine community. This reconfiguration will serve to improve the precision of marine warnings, forecasts, and other services by allowing forecasters to be more area specific.

Also customers using a graphical representation of these zones must download an updated marine zone map shapefile to correctly depict the marine forecast areas for the Caribbean and southwest North Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico offshore waters.

An updated marine zone map shapefile containing the new zones is available for download from the following website:

The NAVTEX forecasts will be reconfigured to limit coverage to within 200 nm of the coasts assigned to each transmitter. Specifically, the forecast area for the New Orleans transmitter will cover the northern Gulf of Mexico from the Suwanee River, FL to the mouth of the Rio Grande, out 200 nm. The Miami NAVTEX forecast area will cover the waters around the peninsula of Florida from SuwaneeRiver on the GulfCoast, to FlaglerBeach on the AtlanticCoast, out 200 nm. The San Juan forecast area will cover the waters within 200 nm of the San Juan transmitter, to include the Mona Passage and part of the Anegada Passage. This reconfiguration will better conform to the range of the transmitters, provide more detailed information along the immediate coast, and better meet broadcast time constraints. For more information, including maps of the new NAVTEX areas, please refer the following website:

In order to better meet the time constraints for voice broadcast via the U.S. Coast Guard, two new products will be made available as listed in Table 4.These products will combine forecasts for the 32 zones in such a way that they will be similar to the Offshore Waters Forecasts before reconfiguration.

TABLE 4. Future Product Headers for USCG Voice Broadcasts:

Product Name WMO Heading AWIPS ID

Broadcast Text for the FZNT31 KNHC MIAOFFN20

Caribbean and Southwest

North Atlantic

Broadcast Text for the Gulf FZNT32 KNHC MIAOFFN21

Of Mexico

If you have any questions or comments about this reconfiguration of TAFB offshore waters marine zones please contact: